“Can I have your number?”
He dries a fork and puts it in the drawer. Dries another fork, puts it next to the first one, perfectly aligned.
“Yes,” he says, and he tells me his number. I put it in my phone and send him a text.
Benji:This is Benji. Your friend. The one who talks a lot. I’m standing three feet from you. Wave if you get this.
His phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out, reads it, and looks at me. Three feet away. Standing at the same counter. He raises his hand and gives me the small Stormy wave. Two fingers. Half a second.
“We’re going to be great friends,” I tell him. “The best. You have no idea what you’ve signed up for. I’m a friendshiphurricane. I’m going to blow into your life and I’m never leaving. You’re stuck with me forever.”
“Okay,” Stormy says. He puts the last plate away and folds the towel into a perfect rectangle and sets it on the counter. Then he says, without looking at me, in a voice so quiet I almost miss it. “I’ve never had a friend before. Just so you know.”
“Well,” I say. My voice is not steady but I’m done pretending I’m a person who keeps it together in this place. “Now you do, Stormy. And I’m the best one you could have gotten because I’m loyal and I’m fun and I will fight anyone who messes with you. I have no fighting skills whatsoever but I will stand in front of you and yell very loudly and that has to count for something.”
“It counts,” he says.
I walk back out to the deck where Mickey is waiting in the sun. Tex has pulled his chair to the railing and is pointing out something in the water, a dolphin or a boat or an unusually shaped cloud that’s about to generate a fifteen-minute story.
Sheila is in her cushioned chair with her eyes closed and her face tipped toward the sun, pretending to rest while also listening closely to everything.
I sit back down next to Mickey. He takes my hand again immediately, threading his fingers through mine, and his thumb starts its slow track across my knuckles. I lean into him, my shoulder against his arm.
“Stormy told me I’m his first friend,” I tell him.
His thumb pauses on my knuckle. “You are,” he says. “The first one he chose on his own. Tex told me on the drive home. He said if I mess things up with you and you stop coming around, Stormy loses the first friend he ever picked. And then Tex said he would not watch him lose another thing so I’d better do things right with you.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say.
“I sure hope not.”
“I gave him my number. I texted him from three feet away. He waved at me. Two fingers. The smallest wave in recorded history. It was the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen and I once watched a golden retriever puppy fall asleep in a pot of sunflowers.”
Mickey laughs, low and quiet.
Tex is telling the story about whatever he saw in the water, which has turned out to be a pelican that dove for a fish and missed. Tex is narrating the pelican’s failure with the gravity and detail of a nature documentary.
“He committed to the dive,” Tex is saying. “Full commitment. Wings back, beak down, the whole aerodynamic package. And then he hit the water and came up with nothing. Just a mouth full of saltwater and a look on his face like a man who just checked his bank account after a vacation here. Confused. Hurt. Questioning every decision that led him to this moment.”
Stormy comes out onto the deck and walks to his chair, the one beside me, and sits down close with his shoulder near my shoulder. His spot now.
I look at the five of us around this table. This is a family.
My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Stormy.
Stormy:I’ll water George and Frankie when you’re not here. I already set a schedule.
I glance over at him. His face is neutral, but the phone is still in his hand.
Benji:They’re lucky to have you, Stormy.
He reads it and puts his phone away. I catch the smallest movement at the corner of his mouth.
He knows I’m not talking about the plants.
Chapter 34: Mickey
The loft is quiet that night after the bar closes. The bar goes silent in stages — the jukebox cutting off, the last barstools scraping, Tex’s heavy tread crossing the floor. Then nothing.
